Downton Abbey: The Exhibition has landed in Boston at The Castle at Park Plaza for an extremely limited three month run. An appropriately themed afternoon tea was held on Friday, June 14th, featuring Executive Chairman of Carnival Films, Gareth Neame, and members of the press and socialites (aka social media influencers).

…there is an extended train fight, daresay, ‘train battle’ that of course perked me right up! Lots of metal for Magneto to play with in a train fight!

One of SNL's newest cast members is rising star Chris Redd. Chris is also known for appearing on Netflix' Disjointed and in movies Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping opposite Andy Samberg, The House and A Futile and Stupid Gesture. Yesterday, Redd dropped his new album But Here We Are on Comedy Central Records (available everywhere).

Todd Fink From The Faint

The Faint bring back their new wave synth punk revival to Brighton Music Hall later this month. We spoke with singer Todd Fink about Egowork, phones at shows, being a hatter with Recapitate Headwear and more!

What’s your favorite or best track on your latest releaseEgowerk?

For me, it's between Life's a Joke, Chameleon Nights, and Child Asleep. I guess I'll go with Chameleon Nights today. The music is unique and the lyrics are passionate. That's one I find myself really getting into at the shows.

One of SNL's newest cast members is rising star Chris Redd. Chris is also known for appearing on Netflix' Disjointed and in movies Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping opposite Andy Samberg, The House and A Futile and Stupid Gesture. Yesterday, Redd dropped his new album But Here We Are on Comedy Central Records (available everywhere).

William Ryan Key, formerly of Yellowcard, is coming to Brighton Music Hall this weekend to celebrate the release of his latest EP, Virtue. William joined us today to talk about his creative process, the final Yellowcard show at House of Blues Boston and what he is listening to right now.

Raymond McGinley, founding member of the Scottish rock band Teenage Fanclub, joined us today to talk about the Creation Years records, new band member Euros Childs, playing The Middle East in the '90s and more to preview their show coming to Paradise Rock Club on March 11th.

The documentary film Remembering Leonard Nimoy is an intimate journey into Leonard Nimoy's life, legacy and his personal battle with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and is screening for free later this month at Joseph B. Martin Conference Center in Boston on November 29th.

Clay, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.I’ve been in and around the Boston music scene for many years, from all ages matinee shows at The Rat to attending concerts at Fenway Park for my day job at Do617.com. A few years ago, I became obsessed and an early adopter of social media technology, I have been on Twitter since the days of the flip phone. In 2005, The Boston Phoenix (RIP) put me on the cover for being the ‘Most Popular Man in Boston’ — according to the social networking site Myspace.

I’m no stranger to a broom (actually, I am, you can ask my partner) but I had some tough questions for my friend good friend Paul Aronofsky of the North End Curling Club about the wonderful world of curling in preparation for this year’s Winter Olympics.

How did you get into the sport?

I was watching the 2010 Winter Olympics and saw these rocks crawling down the ice very slowly and people just screaming back and forth and sweeping in front of it, and was like “this is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen! How do I get into this?”

Boston’s Top 5 Pizza Places

If you were to believe Serpentor’s telling of the origin of pizza, the delicious meal was conceived at theSiege of Alesia in 52 BC by Julius Caesar with pita and “some cheese, even the stale rinds will do” toasted over a fire by Roman centurions. This could all be a bunch of hooey derived by writer Larry Hama to fill pages in G.I. Joe Yearbook #3 in 1987, but we love it so much that our head canon can’t be swayed.

Adam Savage (Mythbusters) and Michael Stevens (Vsauce) joined us to talk Brain Candy Live!, actual candy and the horrors of mansplaining. But more importantly, science! This two part interview caused a riff in the space-time continuum. First we asked Adam Savage about Brain Candy Live! and working with Michael Stevens.

DO617: WE’RE EXCITED ABOUT BRAIN CANDY LIVE!

ADAM SAVAGE: Me Too!

WHAT IS THE MOST SURPRISING THING THAT HAS HAPPENED WITH A GUEST ON STAGE AT BRAIN CANDY LIVE?

We have some wonderful, wonderful audience interactions. We bring a young person up on stage every night to build a machine with us. It is really, really fun to get their help, they don’t quite realize what kind of machine they are making and then they get to drive it.

Havin’ a hell of a good time, thanks for asking! We’ve really missed the states and our experiences in the USA had such an impact on this record, it’s feeling really special to play them to American audiences finally.

5 QUESTIONS WITH CJ RAMONE

CJ, THANKS FOR JOINING US. WHAT’S NEW WITH YOUR SOUND ON AMERICAN BEAUTY?

SONGWRITING IS A GOOD PIECE SHARPER AS IT’S MY THIRD GO AROUND, SECOND ONFAT WRECK. I WORKED WITH PRODUCER/ENGINEERPAUL MINERTHIS TIME SO THE SOUND OF THE RECORD IS BIG! GUITARS A BIT CRUNCHIER AND THE VOCALS MORE UP FRONT WITH A GOOD DOSE OFSTEVE SOTO’SBEATLESQUE HARMONIZING. IT ALSO INCLUDES SOME GREAT PERCUSSION BYPETE SOSAANDDAN ROOT’SGUITAR WORK THAT CAN’T BE BEAT. WE’VE EVEN GOT THE BOYS FROMMARIACHI EL BRONXPLAYING TRUMPETS ON A TRACK!

How is it playing with other punk royalty Steve Soto (Adolescents), Dan Root (Adolescents), and Pete Sosa (Street Dogs) and will these guys be joining you on the road?

COULDN’T ASK FOR BETTER. THERE’S A CONFIDENCE YOU FEEL STEPPING ON STAGE WITH VETS LIKE THOSE GUYS. PETE IS THE BABY BOY OF THE GROUP, BUT HAS AS MUCH ROAD TIME AS SOME OF THE OLD TIMERS IN THE BUSINESS.

THE ONE HANG UP IS THOSE BOYS ALL GET BUSY SOMETIMES AND I’VE GOT TO KEEP IT ROLLING. MY SECOND LINE UP ISCHRIS ELLERANDJOSH BLACKWAYFROMTHE HUNTINGTONSAND MY GOOD BUDDYNATE SANDER.

How is it working with the fine folks at FAT WRECK CHORDS?

YEAHFATIS A GOOD HOME FOR ME. NEVER HAVE A PROBLEM GETTING SOMEONE ON THE PHONE AT HEADQUARTERS AND THEY’RE QUICK AT GETTING THINGS DONE. ALSO DOES NOT HURT THAT THEY’VE GOT A BOAT LOAD OF GREAT BANDS WHICH MEANS LEAVING WITH LOTS OF VINYL ANYTIME WE STOP IN ON A WEST COAST RUN!!

Care to tell us about your charitable work with Autism Speaks or any other organization?

I. HAVE SUPPORTEDAUTISM SPEAKSFOR A LONG TIME NOW. I DO THE LONG ISLAND WALK WITHTEAM CJ RAMONEEVERY YEAR. MY WIFE DENISE ORGANIZES MOST OF MY INVOLVEMENT AND WE ARE PLANNING ACJ RAMONE BIRTHDAY BASHTO RAISE SOME FUNDS ALSO. AUTISM SPEAKS FUNDS INCREDIBLE AMOUNTS OF RESEARCH AND WITH THE NUMBER OF KIDS BEING DIAGNOSED EVERYDAY, IF THIS WAS A FATAL DISEASE IT WOULD HAVE BEEN CALLED AN EPIDEMIC LONG AGO AND THE FEDS WOULD HAVE POURED MILLIONS OF DOLLARS INTO IT. . SO TO MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS IN THE AUTISTIC COMMUNITY, STAY TOUGH!!!

Do you have a favorite ACID EATERS track? It doesn’t have to be one you played on!

5 QUESTIONS WITH OLGA FROM THE BESNARD LAKES

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE THING ABOUT PLAYING IN BOSTON? OUR CHARMING ACCENTS? OUR HOSPITALITY?

I do love the Boston accent! We used to have a roommate from Boston and she has the best lingo and the best laugh. What else can you say, it’s a wicked deadly town you got there. I’m originally from the west coast of Canada, I grew up in British Columbia, and apparently we have awesome accents too, ha.

CARE TO TELL US ABOUT THE NAME OF YOUR LATEST EP,THE BESNARD LAKES ARE THE DIVINE WIND?

We’d been tossing around the idea of revisiting the “Besnard Lakes Are the…” title, and Jace came up with the Divine Wind. It’s apparently the english translation of Kamikaze, which he’d been reading about and thought it was a cool idea. It’s got a kind of poetic darkness to it, which is right up our alley.

5 QUESTIONS WITH CAPTAIN SENSIBLE OF THE DAMNED

Did you know that the venue you are playing PARADISE ROCK CLUB is also celebrating 40 years?

No, good luck to them… if them walls could speak what stories they’d tell. Whereas with us the carnage over the years is well known. I can only guess at the money it cost us to replace wrecked equipment and pay fines. Of course, we had no idea it was us paying it all… managers don’t tell you that stuff. Until you ask them why you’re still stoney broke - despite playing all those shows.

Do you have any memories of past Boston shows you’d like to share?

The Rat Club.. we had some fun there over the years. Not so much the first time though, when between songs the audience chatted among themselves, accompanied by the sound of cutlery on plates. We dragged a table up onstage and ordered pizza… if you can’t beat em join em!

The band has of course taken some time off over the years, but continues to roll on and tour. What keeps you all coming back?

While there’s discerning music fans out there who want to see us, and we’re fit enough to do it we’ll keep going. Those old frauds the Stones are still out there, can’t let those old swines outlive us.

When our guitarist and leader Brian James quit the band in ‘78 we were considered to be washed up… especially with no history of songwriting between the remaining 3 members. But I wasn’t going back to cleaning toilets if I could possibly help it so started composing like anyone’s business, and with the help of our chum Lemmy on bass we did some gigs that procured a new record deal, and a new musical adventure began - that went thru garage, psych and goth phases… with us eventually becoming the evangelists for live music you see now. We live for that manic hour and a half onstage when there’s an element of danger and chaos… and anything could happen.

The music business has changed but the support from your vast swath of punk, goth and rock fans continues to stay the same. Not many you started out with are still doing it. How was it working with Pledge Music to fund your latest album, offering your fans something that they want?

Things are very different now… but we caught the tail end of a golden period for bands. When a label would book a live in studio for a few weeks and trust you to deliver something they can sell. They often ended up with drastically different records to that they were expecting… and you simply can’t imagine that ever happening today. We used to enjoy seeing the slightly shocked record company faces when we played our new finished albums the first time.

Our mates the Buzzcocks told us about this Pledge Music thing which I’d no idea about - but when told it allowed us to make the album that WE wanted to make… without a record label bloke watching over your shoulder I was there. So we can pretty much do what we like - which in the 80s would’ve meant getting comprehensively sloshed and wrecking the studio - probably getting thrown out of a few along the way for those sort of capers. Not this time though, being considerably older… and hopefully wiser.

Pinch, Stu and a Monty are such great players… they’re going to get a chance to flex their muscles musically. This is a band that can break out of a song structure and really jam it up.

Each album we’ve made sounds different from the last one - and this one will continue that trend. It’s fun to experiment, to be creative… take a few risks. The only shame is not releasing before the world tour, but to have boshed out a half finished album would be wrong. I have Sgt Pepper and Pet Sounds in my vinyl collection, played em to death over the years, and unlikely as it sounds always aspire to achieve those elevated standards.

Do you have a favorite (or least favorite) THE DAMNED song to play live?

Fave - Neat Neat Neat for the jamming scope the riff allows… we never play it the same twice.

HOW WAS YOUR NO THANKS! SHOW AT BLACK CAT D.C. ON INAUGURATION DAY?

WHAT IS CASA RUBY & ONE DC?

K: Homelessness is a problem in every major US city but people don’t consider how unsafe many shelters are for queer people. There is a necessity for shelter from the elements but also places where you will be respected, and cis and straight people might take that for granted sometimes.

G:ONE DCis a grassroots organization organizing around fighting displacement and supporting people who live in these communities in our area who are being displaced, their organizing principles enable people affected to speak for themselves.

YOU MUST GET THIS QUESTION A LOT, BUT HAS ANY BAND MEMBER CURED THEIR ILLS BY LEECHING?

All the gentlemen of theUpper Crustare regularly bled as a kind of preventive maintenance, usually employing leeches; but in fact they often just bleed spontaneously as a result of hemophilia occasioned by good breeding, exacerbated by their natural clumsiness.

5 or so More Questions with Ryan Miller of Guster at Do617. We headed to a VIP celebration of both Paradise Rock Club and Guster last night. Our interviewer really needs a tripod and a microphone but his arm remained (mostly) steady to hear Ryan talk about coffee, Boston and the music industry! Thanks, Ryan for coming correct!